Get me out of MI6
Boris’s dad had trouserless meltdown when he was at spy school
STANLEY Johnson’s chums fear he will crumble in a Bushtucker trial – after he cracked under pressure when his trousers were taken from him at spy school.
MI6 recruited Boris’s dad at the height of the Cold War in the 60s and spent a fortune putting him through his paces to be a “James Blond 007”.
But Stanley, 77, flopped and quit because he was so hopeless.
A source close to Stanley said: “He couldn’t cope with the pressure of being a spy. He was hopeless. Heaven knows how he will cope when faced with a million cockroaches crawling all over him.
“He’ll be shouting, ‘Get me out of here’ before you know it.”
He has described in his book, Stanley I Presume?, how he underwent “the most intense training in clandestine techniques known to man”, including how to avoid being blackmailed and blow up train lines.
But during a fake interrogation by MI6 operatives in which he was stripped naked, he couldn’t cope and even forgot his cover name.
“My name’s Stanley. No, it isn’t actually. It’s Bunwell. Jeremy Bunwell. I mean Buncroft,” he writes. “I won’t pretend the next 10 hours were pleasant. In the end, I cracked. If they hadn’t taken my trousers away I might have toughed it out.”
Eventually, he quit and decided to work for the World Bank.
The pal added: “Given his famous son, everyone expects him to be voted the lion’s share of trials by the public. SOAP star Jamie Lomas is set to keep his cool in the heat and trials of the jungle with chanting and meditation.
The 42-year-old has said: “I’m very spiritual and learnt chanting and meditation. Meditation does change you. It helped relieve me of a lot of angst and made me calmer. I used to be stressed all the time.”
Jamie, who left Hollyoaks last week, It won’t end well if the spy debacle is anything to go by.”
But despite the pressure cooker of the Bucktucker trials being a potential pitfall, Stanley is well suited to the jungle life. He has trekked around Peru and followed adventurer Marco Polo’s route around the world.
And TV and radio presenter pal Mike Read – who took part in the third series told pals he wanted to show his calm and caring side as a jungle contestant.
A friend of the actor – who played bad boy Warren Fox in the Channel 4 soap – said: “Jamie is not the person a lot of people think he is. There is another side to him. He is a good actor and a caring person away from the cameras.”
The pal added he hoped his I’m A of the ITV show in 2004 – believes Stanley could win and be crowned King of the Jungle.
Read said: “My money is on Stanley. He’s extremely bright and very likeable – a great character.
“He’s not someone who is above himself. Stanley is not going to pretend to be anybody other than he is.” Celebrity stint would boost his job prospects, saying the show “could really be a springboard for his career”.
Jamie, who has also appeared in EastEnders, was married to Coronation Street star Kym Marsh until they split in 2013.
They have a daughter, Polly. A son, Archie Jay, born 18 weeks early, died just minutes after birth in 2009. Read, who is starring in pantomime at Windsor Theatre Royal, added: “Some of the celebrities go into the jungle, play games and try and be this that and the other, but Stanley will just be straightforward.”
Stanley had been banned by his family from appearing on I’m A Celebrity after producers got in touch in previous years.
He admitted in his book: “I have had occasional feelers from TV producers who would like me to eat worms in the Australian forests... but whenever these overtures have seemed likely to turn into hard offers, a ‘family veto’ has been applied.”
He added that while he did not mind making a “fool of myself ”, there were “other people, near and dear to me, who do”.
Before he was announced for the show, Stanley admitted he had not told anyone he had signed up – suggesting he may be in the doghouse at home, and with Boris. The EU environmental expert and novelist said his children will probably not find out he is on I’m A Celebrity “unless they turn the telly on”.